According to the USDA regulations on organic food, whether a food product is considered organic depends on factors such as soil quality, pest and weed control, use of additives, and in the case of animals, how they are raised. For produce, it can be called organic if it is grown on soil that has had no prohibited substances such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in it for three years before harvesting. For food with multiple ingredients, there are further restrictions on processed foods containing artificial preservatives, coloring, or flavors.
Our maple trees have been allowed to naturally sprout and grow for hundreds years before our sugaring operation even started, so we have never used fertilizers or pesticides. There is no need for them. Being trees, there is a much lower risk of them being destroyed by insects than with typical food crops like grains or fruit. The weather and climate are on our side because the winters here are so long and so cold that most bugs are south of us. Climate change is the greatest long term threat to maple syrup, so we boil over wood not fossil fuels and get all of our electricity from renewable sources.
As for additives, maple syrup is 100% pure by law . Despite having one ingredient - the concentrated sap of maple trees - the flavors in our syrup are very complex and intense. There is no need to add anything to make it delightful. The colors of maple syrup are naturally beautiful. Maple syrup needs no preservatives because the high sugar content makes it naturally anti-bacterial. Unopened maple syrup has a shelf life of three years.
Maple syrup is inherently organic. To get our maple syrup certified organic, we would need to go through a bureaucratic process. We don't use pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides, or add artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. We also do not add bureaucracy.
The questions I ask - would organic certification improve the health of our forest or improve the health of the environment and would organic certification improve the flavor of our maple syrup? If the answer to any of those questions were yes, I would get our sugaring operation certified organic.